Homer World Literature Analysis - Essay

Homer World Literature Analysis

Accepting an eighth century dating for composition of the Iliad and Odyssey, as most modern scholars do, logically raises questions regarding the appropriateness of the Homeric poems as historical testimony. Such questions do not grow substantially fewer by moving Homer’s century back to the ninth. Archaeological methods developed since Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations at the site of Troy in the 1870’s have set the dates for the historical Trojan War between 1194 and 1184 b.c.e. That would mean that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey describe a historical period four or three hundred years anterior to his own. Since the Greek world was still at its preliterate stage...